Switching between subjective and objective modes is the essence of the scientific modus operandi. Not many people seem to appreciate that. Science is all about riding two horses, maybe not in concert, but certainly alternately - and knowing when to switch from one to the other.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

I had intended to embed the video, but the code is not working, at least on this laptop. In the meantime, here is a link to the E.on Energy Debate (really more a Question Time), which this blogger attended. He was in fact privileged to be invited to ask the first question - see right hand margin re "How sensible is a one-size-fits-all solution to global energy policy?

Update: I have just discovered to my disgust that the Telegraph has deleted virtually* ALLof the E.on-sponsored content. And I mean everything - every one of the 10 weekly articles from Andrew Charlesworth, the staff journalist, and every one of the 3, sometimes 4 "reader" blogs that accompanied them, mine included, together with the comments they attracted.

This is shabby behaviour by any standard, Telegraph, and the fact that you now have a sponsored series going with Shell is no doubt the reason for wiping the record. but invited comment too? Yes, Kate Day appeared on My Telegraph, inviting folk to sign up for the 10 week series. I shall say no more on the matter just now. Words fail me.

Here is a C&P of the blogs I contributed over a 10 week period. I'd have saved the comments too if I had had a crystal ball.

* Googling has turned up just one archaeological specimen, a video clip from the Energy Debate with Panel introductions. Without this, one would hardly know there had ever been a sponsored series with E.om, such is the efficiency of the Kremlin-style airbrushing of history.

Week 1 post: Pumped up about water-power

Who can doubt that the future lies with renewable energy, and that we Brits are blessed with the stuff – existing or yet-to-be-realized.
First, there are those wind turbines – not the stuff of Wordsworthian rapture I grant you - but they are increasingly being sited offshore.

Then there’s solar energy, with a choice of two panels for your roof – the older thermal, or the state-of-the-art PV panels that can feed the electricity you don’t use into the National Grid.
And there’s wave power – which is a kind of secondhand solar power, recalling that weather and wind are due to unequal heating of the Earth’s surface.
And there’s even the dear old man in the moon, not wishing to be outshone by his flashy big brother, who contributes the prospect of tidal power. Just wait until we have a hydroelectric barrage across the Severn Estuary, supplying maybe as much as 10 per cent (?) of our power supply. (Yes, there are downsides, needless to say, to any big scheme, in terms of amenity, effect on wildlife, capital cost, the carbon-footprint of setting up etc. But let’s stick with the broad brush today.)
The problem with most of the renewable schemes is that the end-product – electricity, that energy-carrier par excellence – is generated at scattered locations across the country, supply may be intermittent, or supply may not match demand around the clock or calendar.
Is there a solution? Yes, there probably is, though it’s not always a panacea. One is talking about big money upfront, and, more to the point, big commitment.
But unless or until fusion power becomes a reality – which may take decades, centuries even – then there is no Plan B, assuming one is not a unbudgeable climate change denialist who thinks the world's scientists in their droves have abandoned all reason in condemning those fossil fuels.
So what is the solution? Simply go to the wiki page on Pumped Hydroelectric Storage, and it’s all there.
Britain already has 4 PHS stations – two in Scotland, two in Wales, and now needs a lot more in different shapes and sizes.
The principle is simple. One has two bodies of water – a lower and upper level. When there’s a surplus of electrical power, say from wind farms during the night, water is pumped from the lower to the upper level. When there’s extra demand, and the conventional stations are struggling to cope, water runs back through turbines, generating electricity.
It’s the closest one can get to “storing” electricity as the potential energy of a head of water. What’s more, the efficiency is surprisingly high – 80 per cent or more they claim in a well-designed system.
Do read the article, to see the new and imaginative ways of developing the principle. The Japanese have usedthe sea on Okinawa as one of the two levels, the other being a reservoir at the top of the headland.
The Danes have a plan that does not even need two levels – the water is simply pumped into a giant bladder which gradually plumps up, creating its own head. Sand is laid on top to get extra oomph.
My favourite is the salt-mine idea. We have lots of worked-out salt-mines in Cheshire and elsewhere. You pump water down into the old-workings, and site your upper reservoir on the surface. Yes, the water becomes brine, so all the equipment has to be corrosion-resistant. But there’s an upside too: once the water becomes saturated brine, it’s 20 per cent heavier than pure water, so becomes a more efficient energy-transfer medium.
What is it they say – where there’s a will, there’s a way!

Week 2 post: The Cost of Wind Power

So, it’s those wind–turbines that take centre-stage today. Practical solution or wooly-minded gesture politics? Cost-effective stop-gap measure or ruinously-expensive irrelevance? A logical and rational choice - or an expression of a closet-aversion to nuclear power?
There’s a lot more that one could say, especially in the light of:

(a) our current economic situation
See especially the mind-boggling cost (£100 billion over 10 years) of even a fairly modest expansion of wind–energy, supplying just 20% maximum of our requirements (that’s on a good day).
(b) the groundswell of anger and contempt being shown – at least on websites – against the projected costs of this Government’s decarbonisation programme. See, for example, Ceri Radford’s article today, entitled: “Global warming debate is too hot to handle” .
and, finally
(c) the strange focus on just one renewable energy source, with little more than lip-service to the others ( wave and tidal power, geothermal energy, solar panels, thermal panels, biomass, nuclear energy, home insulation, heat pumps etc).
All is not lost. If like me you are a tad “green“ in your outlook, worryingly so perhaps to fellow-Telegraph readers, you may feel one should be “ doing one’s bit”. If so, then consult theGovernment’s website on grants for renewable energy.
Don’t be put off by the Brave New Client State listings as to who qualifies. If you’re self-reliant, ie not on benefits, then it’s just freebie energy-saving light bulbs and subsidized gas central heating that are denied you.
Look closely and you’ll see there are grants for everyone, at least for a limited period, regardless of income, for anyone wishing to go green, even for your very own wind-turbine or hydroelectric scheme.
Whether you have any spare cash after paying for the next generation of windmills (and Government IOUs) about which you were unconsulted remains to be seen!
Read James Lovelock on thesubject of wind-power. He doesn’t mince his words!

Week 3 post: What about our economic survival?

Almost every headline these days with “energy” in the title adds to my despair. This last week we’ve been told there’s to be a levy on our energy bills to pay for “clean carbon technology”.
Clean carbon? Wot, finding places we can squirrel away CO2 for a few decades (hopefully) in order to meet carbon-undertakings entered into lightly? (No country with a trillion pound national debt, rising by the minute, should be making such commitments).

Then we read that there’s to be a catch-up programme on nuclear power stations, which are back in fashion, but no subsidy. Why one for coal, but not for nuclear? Where’s the logic in that?
Then we read that a £100 billion is to be spent in the next ten years on wind turbines. So how come Spain is able to generate 50% of its energy, admittedly on a good day, with turbines costing less than a billion?
Why are we, a strapped-nation, attempting to find these staggering sums of money – better spent on paying down debt – when other nations can do it at a fraction of the cost?
Yes, we know about the extra costs of siting turbines offshore. But why have rotor costs doubled in two years? And why are we still importing ours? Why aren’t we making them ourselves, as Rolls-Royce pointedly asked yesterday? And if it’s a mixed bag of energy we seek, then why no Govt campaign to cut our domestic bills, by installing heat pumps, thermal or PV panels etc?
Why so little publicity to the available grants for renewable energy? Is it because they are unofficial, offered by the industry, despite appearing on a Govt website?
Yes, let’s have that Severn barrage. It should have been started in 1973, with the first oil crisis. Which leads me on to national strategic considerations, to do mainly with oil – and COAL.
North Sea Oil is running out – natural gas as well. Where’s the National Plan to cope with rising import bills, with the renewed threat of blackmail by dem furreners Where’s the joined-up thinking?
Have a look at the Forbes website: It describes how apartheid S. Africa, and before it Nazi Germany, dealt with the threat of oil blackmail. Not the nicest of historical precedents I grant you, but let’s focus on the science.
Converting coal to oil (CTO*) is a ready-made technology which supplies S. Africa with 40% of its oil. Why aren’t we, a nation with several centuries-worth of coal under our feet, not doing the same?
The present stumbling block is, needless to say, our new national obsession – the carbon footprint. A CTO station produces two and half times the CO2 of an oil refinery, we’re told.
My reaction is to say, so what? The aim is to reduce our NATIONAL carbon footprint – not to impose an economic strait jacket on every local or promising new development with strategic as well as economic considerations.
We as a nation urgently need to maintain our AAA credit status if we are to remain solvent. What better signal than to announce that it’s our aim to become largely self-sufficient in energy, especially in oil and gas that appear on the balance of payments figures. Coal can give us coal gas (50% hydrogen!), oil, coke (for our steel industry) and many other goodies besides.
If we are going down the road of burying CO2, then let’s start with CTO if one has to. But I’d say, cut development and running costs by venting CO2 into the atmosphere, but offset with a programme of subsidized home improvements to reduce CO2 elsewhere.
We are fighting for our economic survival goddamit! Aka CTL (coal-to-liquids).
P.S. The writer has no personal financial stake in any of the above, except as the recipient of modest pensions dependent on future stock market performance.

Week 4 post: Blame the Government and the energy suppliers:

The Government and energy suppliers are getting it all wrong. They are attempting to market future power supplies as if they were a desirable and seductive consumer product - a new car or a plasma TV.
If one’s talking of a shiny new fashion accessory, then a group of investors finds the start-up capital, maybe going to the money markets.

The product is then priced so as to make a return on that possibly risky investment, and also gradually (very gradually) to recoup the capital investment .
But one should not be applying the same principle to a boring old utility company (sorry, Eon, but when did you last see an undignified scramble on Monopoly for Waterworks and Electricity?).
There is no new product – gas, electricity etc. It’s the same old product, but with the prospect of ever -increasing bills. Yes, that’s the difference between launching a new saloon car, and generating more bog-standard electricity, if you’ll pardon the expression – RISK – of which there is much, much less in the utilities industries– and the business model should reflect that.
It’s probably not a good idea to use a blog to float a brainwave – least of all one that has only just entered one’s head, with a theme that may not be Mozart to the sponsor’s ears. But here goes.
The consumer must not be taken for granted. The consumer needs a carrot as well as a stick.
Here’s what I suggest. The Government announces an additional VOLUNTARY levy on fuel bills calculated to cover the capital cost of new nuclear power stations, wind farms etc.
The first million who sign up will get a 10 per cent discount, in perpetuity, on their bills. The next million that sign up will get a 9 per cent discount. The more numerate readers can probably detect a pattern here - one that should allow them to work it out for successive tranches… ;-)
So stop taking us energy consumers for granted. Industry and government need our goodwill and cooperation to meet its carbon targets, and to achieve greater economies in our homes.
So kindly cut us in please on some of the investment returns, given we are expected to put up some or all of the risk capital. Failure to do so will simply serve to generate a new wave of eco-cynicism – one that will destroy the incentive for individual initiative.
Or is no place seen for the latter in our brave new post-privatization world of State-supervised near-Monopoly?

Week 5a post: Carbon Capture and Storage

So it’s coal that will plug the gap in our energy supply, is it? That’s provided we can bury the evidence (CO2).
And that’s the long and the short of it: we sign up to agreements one day, promising hand-on-heart that we will honour our CO2 obligations – and then, and only then, decide if we have the technology.

Having thus painted ourselves into a corner, we have no option but to go looking for the rainbow’s end, but with a difference. A pot of gold is needed upfront to get there. That’s the price of seeing whether “carbon capture and storage”, CCS, is feasible, or even safe.

And who’s to provide the pot of gold for R&D? Yes, you guessed correctly. There’s to be a special levy on consumers, with no guarantee the technology will work. Even if successful in a narrow technical sense, would it not be replacing one putative hazard (atmospheric) with another one (geological) that could haunt future generations?
First, let’s be clear about what is proposed. It sounds simple and straightforward if you say it quickly: CO2 will be pumped underground where it will remain for thousands of years, or so we are assured. See thisBBC feature on CCS
But when you look at the detail, the technology proposed is not just optimistic – e.g. finding the right geological strata capable of concealing billions of tonnes of CO2 under the biospheric carpet, out of sight, out of mind (?), it’s positively hair-raising.
Firstly, it’s not CO2 GAS that’s being pumped underground, but LIQUID CO2 – a refrigerant by any other name – needing huge pressures (70 times atmospheric!) to make and keep it liquid.
So where’s all this volatile refrigerant to be stored, where it can be kept under pressure to stop it turning back to a gas?
Answer: suitable spots in the Earth’s crust at least 800 metres deep. You see, there has to be the weight of millions of tons of overlying rock on top of to prevent it vaporizing back to gas. So the idea is basically to do what’s done in oil drilling, but in reverse.
Contrary to common belief, the crude oil down there is not in lakes. It’s dispersed throughout the pores of solid rock. It’s the pressure of overlying rock that brings it up to the surface. So the idea is to find porous rock down there, and then inject liquid CO2 under pressure.
Does this not strike you as a heroic, possibly foolhardy thing to do? How is the lid to be kept on this potentially self-propellant liquid CO2? By means of a “geological cap”, we are told. See that BBC website
And it’s warm down there too, is it not? When I read all this, I’m reminded of a rather naughty thing I used to do as a child with our pressure cooker. If left to cook the potatoes, then instead of cooling the cooker under running water, as prescribed, I’d get a fork, and simply lift off the collection of weights that were the safety valve.
The jet of steam was spectacular, hitting the ceiling, and lasting for half minute or more! Embryonic scientists learn to live dangerously!
I cannot help but recall that steam-spectacular when reading that liquefied CO2, under high pressure, is to be stored underground, relying upon a “geological cap” to keep the lid on things. Yeah, right. And what if CO2 did suddenly leak out – creating a dense carpet of suffocating gas?
And we’re picking up the tab to turn a boffin’s wild-eyed dream of “safely locked away” CO2 into reality… Dream or the stuff of nightmares? Is there a sane geologist in the house?

Week 5b post: Doubts about CCS

Still on “carbon -capture and storage” (CCS) – all £10 billion pounds worth upfront in the form of fuel levies (says he with a deep sigh): the more I think about it, the less I like it.
To recap: the plan is to dispose of CO2 gas from power stations by piping the gas (well, liquid actually) underground. The preferred geology, we are told, are porous rock layers deep underground, overlaid with a “geological cap”. It’s the same geology, we are assured, that kept crude oil trapped under ground for millions of years until the day our oil drills penetrated.. If it worked for crude oil, then - beware the Cheshire cat grin - why not for liquefied CO2? More about Cheshire later…

Hold on a minute. Did anyone else apart from me do O-Level Chemistry? Carbon dioxide reacts with water to make carbonic acid (H2CO3). And water is everywhere – especially deep underground.
Carbonic acid gradually attacks and dissolves limestone (calcium carbonate, CaCO3). And guess what: limestone is the preferred rock into which to inject CO2. It’s like a sponge we are told (“porous structure”).
So the limestone would gradually get eaten away and hollowed out (the timescale is anybody’s guess). Caverns and chambers will form. But that can’t go on forever. Sooner or later the roof will collapse (overlying pressure). Think old salt workings, Cheshire, surface subsidence, bye bye your home-sweet-home. “Dear insurers, I am writing this from a temporary address…”
For a dramatic (well OK, slightly over-dramatic) representation, see a recent post of mine on My Telegraph (scroll down to last comment).
Time scale? Who can say? But high local concentrations of CO2 and subterranean warmth (geothermal energy) would both favour rapid solution of limestone. So how good would that “geological cap” be if keeps periodically collapsing into underground caverns?
And what happens to dissolved limestone? Well, it changes to soluble calcium bicarbonate (aka hydrogen carbonate, Ca(HCO3)2). But calcium bicarbonate is chemically unstable: it reverts back to calcium carbonate (“chalk”) and CO2. It’s why pipes and kettles fur up in hard water districts, and what creates stalactites and stalagmites. Reforming of chalk is the least problem: MORE IMPORTANTLY, the CO2 gas would inevitably be re-released at a later date, seeping back gradually into the atmosphere or the oceans. Ever heard the term “futile cycle”?
In fact, there is another more fundamental objection to the entire strategy of burying future emissions of CO2. According to some theoreticians, CO2 has already produced most of its greenhouse gas/global warming effect.See the this article.
cIf global warming is still in progress – and only the statistical illiterati can think otherwise – then it’s not due to additional CO2. What is responsible? Methane? Soot? Positive feedback effects (eg melting Greenland ice exposes rock with decreased albedo, greater absorption of solar radiation, still more infrared, more warming?
The logic of that case, if true, is that prevention of further CO2 increase is not enough. Sooner or later we must engineer a DECREASE in CO2.
How can that be done? Conversion of biomass to inert charcoal (“biochar”) has been touted as a radical solution. The carbon must on no account be burned, but could still have uses, eg as a soil conditioner. (Such as shame to waste a valuable fuel, but it’s not wasting carbon – fossil carbon – that got us into this trouble).
Pyrolysis of wood etc to biochar is at best energy-neutral, and probably has an energy cost. It would have to be supplied from renewable energy to make any sense. That would mean less energy for power generation.
Without wishing to sound alarmist, we are in a real fix, folks – make no mistake about it.

Week 6 post: The problem with gas

So, the main focus this week has switched to gas. Hmm. What can one usefully say about gas? Well, starting in the late 60s/early 70s, we used to have lots of it from the North Sea. How long ago that all seems now – like the man coming to convert our gas cookers.
Well, we’re now told that natural gas is running out. I never did trust those finite resources! We are now forced to import more and more –but in specially converted tankers - as liquefied natural gas . Dodgy - very dodgy. Enough said.

Are there substitutes for methane that we could make ourselves, to cut our imports bill?
Probably not. Sure, we used to pipe coal gas to people’s homes. But the paramedics and hospitals hated it – need I say more - and gasworks were smelly.
What about a renewed role for coal – not a popular line to take right now, least of all with those gathering right now in Copenhagen, looking to set targets on carbon emissions? (OK, so I’m straying off gas).
Personally, I don’t question the need to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions. There will have to be a greater role for nuclear power, for renewable energy, with natural gas being a bridge. But why consign coal to oblivion on account of its high carbon footprint? Does every single process have to tick every green box?
You see, there’s coal-to-oil technology, currently used in S.Africa to replace 40% of oil imports.
The coal is gasified with injections of oxygen and steam, to make ‘syngas’ , a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen . One could burn syngas – for a power station - but that would be squandering a big opportunity.
Why? Because the mixture can be passed over heated catalysts to effect the Fischer-Tropsch process . The result, to a jaded chemist, is pure magic. The mixture transforms to a range of hydrocarbons, general formula Cn H2n+2 where n starts at 1 (plain old methane CH4) but can be much much higher. When n is 8, one is producing octanes, C8H18, which are volatile liquids, ideal for use as synthetic petrol. Planes have been flown on synthetic coal-derived petrol!
But as indicated – there’s a fly in the ointment. The process creates a larger carbon footprint than does conventional refining of crude oil. That’s because it generates some CO2 as a waste product. OK, so one could sequester it underground – using that somewhat dubious CCS - but it adds considerably to the costs - some 25 to 30%. That’s quite apart from any environmental concerns one may have about creating subterranean pressure cookers full of liquefied CO2 under the Earth’s crust.
Well, I’ve strayed from gas, onto oil – albeit synthetic oil - derived from coal.
Yes, I do see a revived role for coal.
Here’s a possible scenario - one that could probably be adopted whatever targets are set at Copenhagen. We would buy in surplus nuclear- generated electricity from France as and when available (it’ll take years to build more of our own power stations). Instead of paying in euros - with a now unfavourable exchange rate- we’d enter a barter deal, swapping it for our coal-derived synthetic oil.
The carbon footprint of French nuclear electricity (very low) and coal-derived oil (high) would average out at something intermediate, possibly comparable to natural gas. So let’s keep coal in the equation, but turn it into vehicle fuel, instead of burning it all directly to CO2 in power stations, with all those expensive and questionable CCS add-ons. Let’s box clever. We’re going to need petrol for vehicles for a while to come, so let’s start making our own - and trading it.

Week 7 post: Going nuclear

The focus this week is on nuclear power. One’s first reaction is to say: “Please – anything but nuclear power!”
Just a quick internet search was sufficient to reinforce all the old misgivings. Why do nuclear power stations have so limited a lifetime – a few decades as most, then requiring horrendously expensive and hazardous disposal of nuclear wastes?

Up popped this return on the decommissioning of nuclear power plants, telling me more than I really wanted to know.
In answer to my question: because of neutron irradiation of the structure, which gradually renders it unsafe (let’s not go into details, except to say that neutrons are like miniature bullets). But the practicalities are disturbing - nay hair-raising, like the mention of having to leave the core intact for a few decades while the worst of the radiation subsides. All my instincts say NO to nuclear power.
But then the practical scientist inside me takes over. Let’s face it, there are remarkably – and depressingly – few options where energy is concerned.
They can be divided into 4 categories: Chemical, Biological, Classical Physical, Nuclear.
Let’s take Chemical first. There are 92 chemical elements in nature, but only 2 of them, free or in chemical combination with other elements, are suitable as fuels, namely hydrogen and carbon. That’s because they react with oxygen to release energy, producing relatively innocuous end products - water and CO2. Innocuous that is from a personal health view. The health of the planet is a different matter (CO2).
Hydrogen has been touted as the fuel of the future. It’s not, and never will be. Why? Because it does not occur free in nature. Obtaining it from water (by electrolysis or reaction with carbon) or from natural gas requires roughly as much energy input as the output when burned.
Hydrogen is not a real fuel – it’s better described as an energy carrier – similar to electricity. Forget hydrogen as a solution to our energy crisis.
Carbon – whether as coal, natural gas etc. is now the no no. So that’s the chemical possibilities exhausted.
Biological power? This means trapping the energy of sunlight with photosynthesis to make biofuels, or methane by fermentation, or charcoal from biomass and then burning the product.
CO2 in this instance is not a no no, because unlike fossil fuel CO2 one is only putting back into the atmosphere what was taken out. Ne would think that biological-energy (really solar) should be a panacea, but it’s not. There are too many associated problems of cost – both economic and environmental.
Classical Physics? Here I refer to renewable energy: wind, hydroelectric, wave and tidal, solar panels, heat pumps, geothermal etc which all depend on converting one kind of physical energy to another, which is usually electricity or heat.
But again – while they can be developed and expanded – they are no panacea. They simply cannot meet those three criteria simultaneously – affordable, reliable, low carbon.
That leaves us with nuclear power. Given there are still abundant reserves of uranium, that it’s not in the hands of a few suppliers, that nuclear power stations are low-carbon (though probably not as low as claimed) and that they operate round-the-clock, then there’s no escaping the conclusion that it is nuclear power that will have to fill the energy gap. That’s until fusion power becomes reality – which may take decades or longer.
It’s a bitter experience for those familiar with the history of nuclear power in Britain – e.g. the decision to develop our own AGR and Magnox technologies, that have not proved as safe and or as economical as the PWR reactors developed in the USA, France etc. Then there was the Windscale incident, and then Chernobyl that all but killed off the UK industry.
I guess we have no choice now but to re-habilitate nuclear power in the UK – and fast – unless we want the lights going out!

Week 8a: Time to reinvent oneself

One’s first thought is unprintable. Does one really want to be bothered with a whole lot of new paraphernalia in and around the house? Does one really want to become an energy-efficient obsessive? Will one suffer terrible pangs of conscience for leaving lights burning? Or luxuriating under a hot shower for another minute or two. Will one feel like an eco-Neanderthal to be the last house in the street without solar panels?
The immediate answer to all these is a forceful NO WAY. But then one thinks to oneself : hold on a min, one’s a baby-boomer who’s probably enjoyed halcyon years the like of which will never be repeated. OK, so it didn’t always seem like clover, like that time interest rates hit 15 per cent, and I was seriously thinking of erecting a tent in my first new house to reduce heating bills, and pinned sheets of polythene across all the windows. But there were those generous student grants, plus the mortgage interest relief and other subsidies that sound bizarre now.

Then one remembers the austerity years – the 50s – before Super Mac told us we’d never had it so good. One of the daily rituals was making up the coal fire. One needed a stock of newspaper – annoying because the chippy would pay you 6d for a decent-sized stack. Then there was the kindling – which cost 6d – or even firelighters if you were posh, or a gas-poker if you were the Jones, and finally the coal. Who can forget the heart-in-mouth experience of waiting to see if the fire “took” before one had exhausted one’s meagre stock of material?
So this veteran of both softer and harder times says – time to reinvent oneself, Sunny Jim, and become an eco-obsessive, one for whom energy economy becomes part of one’s daily routine.
So where would I start? A well-insulated hot water tank, obviously. It can pay for itself in weeks, they say. Then loft insulation. Double the thickness, even if it means ditching all those seems-a-shame-to-throw-them-away items. Ditch – that’s an order ! (trust me, you’ll feel much better when the deed is done).
Then cavity wall insulation – and get any grants that are going.
Don’t stop with the cavity, though. Put up pine-panelling inside, with an air gap. Even more insulation – and you’ve sequestered some carbon into the bargain. Let a Scottish or Scandinavian forest make some more wood, taking up more CO2. Maybe laminate flooring too, with a good quality insulating underlay.
Then install double-glazing if one hasn’t already done so. Cost-effectiveness? Let’s keep that for comments.
Then consider a replacement gas boiler, preferably a double-condenser. Cost effectiveness? As above.
Then one thinks about the big ticket items. Hopefully there will be new grants and subsidies shortly – provided the whole thing doesn’t get bogged down in party politics.
My first preference would be for photovoltaic (PV panels) with a feed to the National Grid, allowing one to sell any surplus. But without a grant to defray the big bill for all that photoelectric silicon, I’d probably settle for good old-fashioned thermal panels, the sort with an intermediate heat-exchanging fluid.
Heat pumps? If one has a big plot for buried heat-exchangers, then yes. Otherwise it’s probably not practical or cost-effective.
Forty words left. Must make each of them count. Damn – have used 14 already. Nope, don’t want a wind turbine. Oh yes, I know. It’s been at the back of my mind for ages. Turn down the thermostats, wear more pullovers (not hairshirts) , and watch the blight of the baby-boomer generation slip away - inch-by-inch - with an increased basal metabolic rate. The fat of the land… (ed – best stop there Colin, you’re over your word limit anyway).

Week 8b post: Colin on COP15

Well now, would you believe it? I’ve been asked by that nice Maya at Blog Central to provide an update. Carte blanche too!
They'll be asking me to be caretaker on the whole front page at this rate, while they nip out to get their Christmas shopping done.

What to talk about? Copenhagen? Oh my! What a disaster! Of course, some of us saw it coming. Here's the question I put to the panel at the E.on Energy Question Time, London, Dec 3: "Re Copenhagen: how sensible is a one-size-fits-all policy on cutting global emissions, given there are other environmental considerations, eg oil stock conservation?"
Supplementary: Might one not envision a smart-deal in which Britain concentrates, say, on converting her abundant coal to petrol, thus conserving oil for organic synthesis (polymers etc) while countries like China and India would concentrate on cutting their CO2 emissions?
Personally, I thought it madness to imagine that a few magic fountain pens could be waved over documents to secure a worldwide agreement.
Whoops. There's my own Xmas shopping still to to complete, Here, with apologies, is a lazy way of concluding, with a copy‘n'paste of what I said yesterday on My Telegraph re Copenhagen, which brought the sky tumbling down on my head (strange place, MyT ;-):
"It's interesting to compare the successful Montreal protocol, phasing out CFCs, with the now failed attempts to reproduce them with Kyoto and Copenhagen. Turning off the CFC tap was easy, because it only required legislation, applied to manufacturers.
Turning off, or at rate down, the anthropogenic greenhouse gas tap is infinitely more difficult, because legislation cannot be applied to individuals - thus the attempt to substitute the quasi-legislative carbon trading at the industrial level, with all the opportunities it offers the opportunists. The whole shebang has been mishandled and misconceived from the word go. Fossil fuels have played a vital role in developing the planet.
One cannot demonise them at the stroke of a pen - or the broadcasting of a few politician's soundbites - and expect the entire world to reinvent itself - especially if that involves re-inventing the windmill. Back to the drawing board, you world so-called leaders. This time, try leading instead of imagining you could solve this one by waving a few magic fountain pens.” http://my.telegraph.co.uk/china_jo/blog/2009/12/20/for_chl
Comments welcome, natch

Week 9 post: Response to Andrew Charlesworth

Response to Andrew Charlesworth’s “On the road to Decarbonisation): Well, Andrew, the ideas that you outline sound great in theory, and one can see why the energy suppliers are keen on them. First, we trade in our petrol/diesel vehicles for electric ones. Then we recharge them at night, using renewable energy from wind turbines etc. That then helps to balance the load on the power supply – we would be recharging when demand for cookers, washing machines etc is low, but the blades are still a turning'o. And we, as car purchasers, would be the ones who would have to cough up for all those expensive storage batteries. Ingenious!
Yes it fits the bill nicely if you are an energy supplier, caught painfully on the over-prolific horns of a trilemma, looking for affordability, reliability and low-carbon simultaneously.

But once it ceases to be purely about generation, and involves the consumer as end-user – then yet another horn sprouts forth - that of convenience. Yes, CONVENIENCE. We are now into quadrilemma territory, with more protests from my spellcheck .
Let’s be clear about one thing. Electric cars do have their uses. They are ideal for congested cities. Why? Because they are zero emissions. That’s not just zero CO2, but zero CO, SO2, NOx and all without those expensive catalytic converters. They are fine as a runabout with low predictable mileages. But they are NOT suitable as general purpose family cars. The reasons are obvious. Once the battery runs flat, it takes hours to recharge. What’s more, one would probably incur a cost penalty for doing that during the day.
Cars play too vital a role in our everyday lives to have one’s convenience curtailed in this fashion. And supposing one got an emergency call in the night, and the car was only half-charged?
Whilst I accept the need to decarbonise where possible, we should be realistic and accept there will always be a role for some CO2-emitting operations. The trick is to replace fossil fuel. One can do that with biofuels, although they are controversial, removing arable land from food production.
There are alternatives. Synthetic petrol can be made from coal via so-called syngas– admittedly with a large carbon footprint. But the same technology could be applied to wood charcoal and other sources of “biochar”, using managed forestry, waste processing etc. The power needs of the process (carbon to syngas to liquid hydrocarbons) can also be met using renewable energy to minimize the carbon footprint.
There’s an intermediate solution – using hydrogen instead of electricity as the energy carrier. But it’s no panacea. It’s not a true fuel – needing energy to produce from water, methane etc – and also having problems of low-range, safety considerations etc.
My interim solution would be based on biochar. Use half of it for synthetic petrol, and the other half as a soil conditioner, applied to marginal land to raise its biomass output.
It’s easy in a fit of crusading zeal to demonise fossil fuels and, from there, all CO2 – including recycling biomass CO2. That is illogical. Here’s a comment from “OntheDot” that appeared on my Week 8a post (“Views on the Climate Change Conference at Copenhagen) that I would recommend to world leaders while licking their post-Cop15 wounds, and hatching their amended plans for Mexico:
“We use energy in three different ways:
1 Electricity; the most useful producer of this would be Nuclear energy.
2 Heating; the most efficient method is gas.
3 Transportation; The only reliable method is liquid hydrocarbons.
Until politicians realise this can we begin to plan accordingly. At the moment we use our energy in a haphazard manner to the detriment of all.”
Thanks OntheDot. Couldn’t have put it better myself.

Week 10 (final post): Diversity and Economy are the Key

Two clear messages have emerged during the ten weeks this series of sponsored features has been running. They can summed up in two words - DIVERSITY (of energy supply) coupled with ECONOMY (at the point of use). The drivers are also two-fold – the need to REDUCE EMISSIONS of greenhouse gases, primarily CO2, and the UK’s INCREASING RELIANCE on imported fuel, notably crude oil, natural gas, and not forgetting uranium for the next generation of nuclear power stations.
Personally, I think it’s a shame we have to stop the discussion now. Why? Because there is, to my way of thinking, a largely unexplored conflict between reducing emissions on the one hand, and watching the national import bill rise on the other. Whether one views decarbonisation as an act of self-interest or one of altruism – or even a forlorn and futile act of gesture politics – given the outcome of Cop15- it’s coming at a time when Britain is ceasing to be self-sufficient in fuel. So we face all the horrendous costs of decarbonisation, estimated at £20 billion a year for the next 10 years, while at the same time we are obliged now to buy fuel with the prospect of volatile spot prices. So we volunteer to be saints on the one hand, while risk being treated as sinners with the next crisis affecting crude oil or gas supplies.

I’ve already hinted in earlier posts to some possible approaches that may help to square the circle. The first is to abandon the absurd one-size-fits-all approach adopted by the major Western nations at Cop15. The major sticking point there was China, along with India and the other rapidly emerging economies. They were offered a stick with no carrot (unless one regards a lessening of the immediate threat of catastrophic climate change as sufficient of an inducement to accept the West’s and UN’s proposals).
If China is to be persuaded to cut its massive discharges of largely coal-derived CO2, it has to be offered a more tangible quid pro quo. What might that be? Security of crude oil supplies – at a price that can be afforded - might just swing it. That’s where other coal-rich nations like Britain can contribute – by developing the coal-to-oil technology that has been so successfully developed by S.Africa, and maybe extending it to biochar-to-oil as well, thereby reducing the net carbon footprint.
My own feeling is that enlightened self-interest is always a better bet where international relations are concerned. Britain needs to reduce its reliance on imported oil, and can do that using its abundant reserves of coal. If we produced a surplus of oil, some could be bartered in exchange for French nuclear electricity between now and 2020 while we catch-up on nuclear power. The carrot? Convincing China that a reduced demand from Britain and other coal-to-oil nations will help to prevent repetitions of the oil price hike that occurred in 2006 – when prices trebled over an 18 month period.
Gettting China – now reckoned to be the second largest economy in the world – to play ball will not be easy – and there may be solutions more realistic or imaginative than the ones proposed here. What’s for certain is that unilateral – or even multilateral agreements on carbon emissions - will be futile unless China, and then India, Brazil, Russia etc are brought on board. One hopes the lessons learned at Cop15 will not be repeated next time around in Mexico. The clock is ticking where global temperature rise is concerned.

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About Me

Colin Berry, aka sciencebod, is a retired PhD researcher/teacher/academic who has worked in industry, medical schools, schools, food and biomedical research (mainly in the UK, but also in W.Africa and the United States). He's best known for his work on RESISTANT STARCH, recently described as "the trendiest form of dietary fibre".
See also his specialist Shroud of Turin blog on www.shroudofturinwithoutallthehype.wordpress.com
with over 200 postings to date.

Create one's own blog (age, class, gender no barrier)

It's really quite straightforward. All one has to do is to click on the photograph with that nice young man. One can then be part of the frightfully interesting Blogger community in just a couple of jiffs.

Acknowledgment

What's the latest on the LHC?

LHC gets warning system upgrade : BBC 28 September 2009

Self-organization

From wiki entry on SELF ORGANIZATION: "As a result, processes considered part of thermodynamically open systems, such as biological processes that are constantly receiving, transforming and dissipating chemical energy (and even the earth itself which is constantly receiving and dissipating solar energy), can and do exhibit properties of self organization far from thermodynamic equilibrium."

How far away should your off-licence be for a bottle of wine to be energy-neutral?

What do these two have in common?

Answer: both arrived in this world about the same time. Sir Isaac Newton was born on 4th Jan 1643 (new style*). The Taj Mahal had a 20 year gestation period, centred on approximately the same year. Click on piccy for an older post .* Or Christmas Day, 1642, depending which dating system one uses.

Is interstellar space travel feasible?

The nearest star (more correctly, star system, since it's 3 stars, a binary and a smaller satellite star) is Alpha Centauri. The average distance from Earth is 4.3 light years. Suppose technology allows us one day to achieve an interstellar cruising speed of half the speed of light. A comfortable acceleration of g (simulating Earth's gravity) would take a year, with another year to slow down comfortably. The entire journey from Earth would take a minimum of 10 years approximately. Having arrived at one's destination, it would take 4.3 years to send a radio postcard (" Hello Mum and Dad. Have arrived safely, and am now looking for a habitable planet. Am hoping it's hiding behind Proxima. Have looked everywhere else... Would die for some Cheddar cheese... ")

Watch this space

It's a cheap and cheerful form of transcendental meditation.(experimenting with settings, actually)

What causes weather?

Could you answer that question in just 7 words, ie " weather is due to...? Need some help, " Weather is due to t- - u - - - - - - h - - - - - - o - t - - E- - - -'s s - - - - - - ." The National Curriculum (England and Wales) does have its uses, but there are many more such simple principles, expressed in a minimum of words, that could be usefully incorporated.

"Had there been a Beginning (there wasn't, as it happens), there would initially have been complete Nothingness. But just as Nature abhors a vacuum, it's totally gutted at the thought of Nothingness. I mean to say - how far does Nothingness extend, assuming it has one of more dimensions? It can't extend for an infinite distance, since that would be a physical impossibility. Nothingness, to avoid having infinite reach, coils up on itself to acquire finite dimensions. In so doing, it becomes Somethingness, which has a spring-like potential energy - the total energy in fact of the Universe.

From that potential energy, present in what we now call space, or space-time, which is anything but empty, is spawned all sub-atomic particles - both matter and antimatter. When those particles collide, they mutually annihilate to create photons.

The reverse can also happen under extreme conditions - two photons can collide to create matter and anti-matter. It is potential energy in the spring-coiled Universe that is our "Dark Energy. It may or may not have mass depending on conditions.

A moment when it has no mass is the instant of the Big Bang. Let me briefly explain. An oscillating universe switches between Big Bang and Big Crunch. With the latter gravitation pulls everything into a super blackhole which then becomes a singularity - a massively dense point in space-time.

What prevents it becoming infinitely small - a physical impossibility? Answer: friction. As the sub-atomic plasma contracts and grinds, heat is generated which cannot escape - being a black hole. The temperature rises, ie particles in the plasma move faster and faster. When they reach their maximum velocity - the speed of light- all particles are suddenly transformed into photons, which as we know have no true mass(at least, no rest mass: any mass they have is purely relativistic due to their speed).

Once the entire Universe is a super-concentration of photons, all the gravitational forces in the singularity collapse to zero, or nearly so, and the entire thing blows apart - a new Big Bang, to create yet another cycle (inflation, Big Crunch, implosion etc). The Big Bang creates not just sub-atomic particles - from photon-photon collisions, but space-time itself. To reiterate: that space-time is always suffused with the stored potential energy of our curled-up dimensions (Dark Energy)."